Critiques

So yesterday I had my critique. A critique is an art school requirement. For the visual or performance artists, a group of people (the panel) walks into a room, sees the work on the wall or in progress, and then critiques it. For us writers, a panel (of four or five) reads our work beforehand (if God is kind to you that day) and then comments. As you can imagine, this can be a nerve-wracking experience at best; some students have been known to come out of critiques crying.

The writing program is still young, compared to all of the other disciplines at the school, and in general neither the writing profs nor the students were well prepared for crits since, as far as I know, no other writing program has them. But generally the kinks have been worked out and the experience is much less painful than it used to be. Apparently, the crits from the early years of the program were particularly brutal and the profs weren’t entirely sure how they should be handling them anyway.

So far, I’ve had three crits. They happen once a semester and you have to do four to graduate, which means next spring will be my last. I have not yet had a terrible experience in that no one has referred to my novel in quotations, as with one of my fellow students. (His crit went something like this; “I don’t think this ‘novel,’ is truly a novel.” He kept trying to explain it was only one chapter of the book, to no avail. The rest of the critique the entire panel referred to his work as the “novel” in a snide way.) I have been told I am mediocre as a writer, however, and this last time I was told my writing (as in the language) was boring. I feel boring is an improvement over mediocre. I will say that the panel participants disagreed among themselves (1 to 3), which helped me not take the whole, “Your writing is boring” criticism personally.

In general I think the crits are very helpful in preparing for book reviews. After someone tells you you’re mediocre to your face, I don’t think it will hurt as bad to read it. And I guess I’m a little less sensitive to criticism than the average student because of the journalism work I’ve done.

One thing I’ve recognized during my MFA experience is how subjective reading is. Writing is not an exact science. Even a critically acclaimed book divides critics and readers. Some people hate certain types of writing or certain scenarios no matter how well they are written; there’s no way to please everyone. I love reading Amazon reader reviews because you will see how divided people are over books. I try to remember that in my own writing. There’s no way everyone will like it.